Anna Quindlen

The best-selling author of Blessings offers an entertaining, lively tour of the English capital and its literary significance, tracking the footsteps of some of her favorite fictional characters--including those created by Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham, Dickens, and other notable authors--throughout London. Reprint.

A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

Imagined London

A gentle book on reading, on geocritical musings, on authors, and the way that cities linger in literary consciousness. This is as much a love letter to London as to the books that dwell within it.

Admittedly I read this on an aeroplane, and my brain soft and dopey, my memories of it are a little cloudy. Having said that, it is an excellent book to read on an aeroplane. Not too demanding, something to agree with, familiar and meandering. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to others - particularly those fascinated with the act of reading or rereading itself. Quindlen makes insightful comments on the nature of literature, and particularly of London's enduring appeal as capital of the literary world. Wrapping history into anecdote, memoir into book review, 

It is important to stress that this does not come across as deeply intellectual. Perhaps academic texts have made me cynical but I must admit I found many pages sickly and thin. It often came across as very (and I mean this politely) 

. An anglophile american who thinks Britain is exclusively tweeds, queens, and "sc-own-s". Sometimes this was sweet and written with no small amount of self-awareness, but other times it came across as patronising.. British people 

this book are a single monoculture. Quindlen presents British literary taste as a fact and the texts as if all drawn from the same unvarying inspiration. I particularly felt bored (a touch excluded) by her numerous claims about 'the English', observations on how 'the English' behave, or what 'the English' think. This generalisation is a lazy destructive habit which collapses the broad diversity of Britain's peoples, languages, accents, dialects, oral histories, folklores, habits, religions etc. etc. into a single american sitcom cliche. It also contrasts painfully from one of the greatest themes of the book; the way London's "soul" has has always lain in its organic diversity, noise, mesh of cultures and class. 

Another niggle I had was the way historical claims were made with abandon (though not always correctly), and there were many many sweeping generalisations on the nature of reading/on literary criticism. In particular, scholarly debate on books are trivialised and often one interpretation is presented as 

 way to read. Which is fine if we remember it is a personal work and not scholarship, even if it sometimes pretends to be. 

Part memoir, effusion, and critical opinion this book is best enjoyed on a hot summer's day. 

hat carter

A gentle book on reading, on geocritical musings, on authors, and the way that cities linger in literary consciousness. This is as much a love letter to London as to the books that dwell within it.

Admittedly I read this on an aeroplane, and my brain soft and dopey, my memories of it are a little cloudy. Having said that, it is an excellent book to read on an aeroplane. Not too demanding, something to agree with, familiar and meandering. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to others - particularly those fascinated with the act of reading or rereading itself. Quindlen makes insightful comments on the nature of literature, and particularly of London's enduring appeal as capital of the literary world. Wrapping history into anecdote, memoir into book review, Imagined London is a joyful thing to read.

It is important to stress that this does not come across as deeply intellectual. Perhaps academic texts have made me cynical but I must admit I found many pages sickly and thin. It often came across as very (and I mean this politely) American. An anglophile american who thinks Britain is exclusively tweeds, queens, and "sc-own-s". Sometimes this was sweet and written with no small amount of self-awareness, but other times it came across as patronising.. British people in this book are a single monoculture. Quindlen presents British literary taste as a fact and the texts as if all drawn from the same unvarying inspiration. I particularly felt bored (a touch excluded) by her numerous claims about 'the English', observations on how 'the English' behave, or what 'the English' think. This generalisation is a lazy destructive habit which collapses the broad diversity of Britain's peoples, languages, accents, dialects, oral histories, folklores, habits, religions etc. etc. into a single american sitcom cliche. It also contrasts painfully from one of the greatest themes of the book; the way London's "soul" has has always lain in its organic diversity, noise, mesh of cultures and class. 

Another niggle I had was the way historical claims were made with abandon (though not always correctly), and there were many many sweeping generalisations on the nature of reading/on literary criticism. In particular, scholarly debate on books are trivialised and often one interpretation is presented as the way to read. Which is fine if we remember it is a personal work and not scholarship, even if it sometimes pretends to be. 

Part memoir, effusion, and critical opinion this book is best enjoyed on a hot summer's day. 

Imagined London A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

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